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While executives of leading firms quit their cushy jobs to settle for an entrepreneurial adventure, there’s a lot that they carry from those employers. Entrepreneurship comes with its own set of hurdles to cross and at times these entrepreneurs rely on the experience garnered from their ex-ivy league employers to settle things.

We asked some successful entrepreneurs as to what they learnt from their previous employers and how they implement those lessons in their entrepreneurial journeys.

Sachin Shenoy, CEO & Co-founder of LetsService

Ex-Employer – IBM

"I started my career with IBM and till date i feel its the best place for innovation. The sheer number of patents that IBM files every year is a testimony to this. Working with global team members, typically based out of US helps you experiment with new age trends and technologies and create your own techno-functional assets which can be game changing for the company. The global culture coupled with this environment of innovation develops a good problem solving characterictic in you which slowly makes you look at solving real-world problems outside the company and eventually makes you entrepreneurial. I have personally seen a lot of great problem solvers from within IBM who have started out on their own, built great products and doing phenomenally well."

Manoj Agarwal, Co-founder, Giftxoxo

Ex- employer- Yahoo, Manipal Global

'An experience with an MNC or large Indian company is of immense help. It gives a larger perspective on how organizations are structured at a large scale. Start-ups have a very minuscule view of the complexity which arise in businesses as they grow. An experience in a large company makes one ready for such challenges and gives you a structured approach to look at things. I have been lucky to have worked with one of the largest MNCs (Yahoo) and a large Indian company (Manipal Global). Both have given me different perspectives. While Yahoo gave a great perspective on global practices in business and techonlogy; Manipal taught how Indian businesses are run.”

Antony Kattukaran, Co-founder Tagalys

Ex-employer – Deloitte

My experience in Deloitte helps me today with my abilities to solve problem and present Tagalys to leadership at any client. The skills I learnt as a management consultant - data analysis, problem solving, executive presentation, market research, project management and many more, are definitely a big aid in my journey as Head of Product, Business Development & CEO of Tagalys. Working with vendors at Deloitte, also gives me clear perspective on what Fortune 500 companies expect in their vendors and that helps me in defining long term strategies at Tagalys. While none of the experience helps me in technical product development efforts at Tagalys, it has helped me in the approach and how to manage the team while building the product.

Vinod Chandrashekar, Co-founder of Kitna Deti hai

Ex-employer – E-commerce firm in the Middle East

I headed data-science teams for a billion-dollar e-commerce firm in the Middle East during my last gig. One of the most important take-away from the MNC experience onto my startups is that: Algorithms make or break a company. At KitnaDetiHai, our focus primarily has been to build core IPs using Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence. It helped us to evolve from a data to data-science company! While every other startup was chasing funding, we stuck to the basics of making the firm defensible first. The analogy is funding provides a mere ammunition for pace, but to truly survive in the battle one has to build the armor first!Decisions such as these have helped us immensely, with clocking over 50k users monthly without a single penny spent on marketing.

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